Chapter 6 #2
Because no one else loves you the way I do. The sentence forms completely and perfectly in my head, as clear as a diagnosis, and I put it away in the place where all the other things I haven’t said are stored. The filing cabinet is full. Has been for years. I keep finding room.
‘I’m a vet,’ I say. ‘Sitting with things is the job.’
She smiles. ‘Tell me more. What about the practice? Any good cases?’
‘Define good.’
‘Interesting. Unusual. Worthy of being photographed and sent to me as a form of psychological warfare.’
‘There was a tortoise with a respiratory infection.’
‘Tortoises can get respiratory infections?’
‘Tortoises can get everything. They’re surprisingly fragile.’
‘That’s devastating. I thought they were immortal.’
‘Common misconception. They’re just slow. People confuse longevity with invincibility.’
‘Don’t we all.’ She’s looking at me with that expression I can never read – warm and knowing and slightly too perceptive, like she can see to the back of the room but doesn’t know what’s there. ‘What else?’
‘A cockatiel with a vocabulary problem.’
‘What kind of vocabulary problem?’
‘It had learned some words from its previous owner that the new owner found objectionable.’
‘What words?’
‘I’m not repeating them.’
‘Tom.’ She leans forward, delighted, and the movement brings her close enough that I can smell her – coconut and floral petals, and underneath that is the warmth of Nina’s skin, which I know because I’ve been hugged by her a thousand times and filed every single one. ‘What words?’
‘They were mostly political in nature. And anatomical. There was some overlap.’
She laughs again, tipping her head back so the fairy lights catch the line of her throat, and Chips lifts his head to watch her with an expression of confused adoration.
I know, buddy. I know. Every time she laughs, something in my chest loosens and tightens at the same time, which shouldn’t be physically possible but has been happening for so many years I’ve stopped questioning the anatomy of it.
‘I missed this,’ she says, when she’s recovered. ‘I missed you.’
The words hit me somewhere unprotected. Not because she said them – Nina says things like this easily, casually, the way she touches people’s arms and remembers everyone’s birthday and leaves notes in your coat pocket when you’re having a bad day.
She doesn’t mean it the way I hear it. She has never meant it the way I hear it. That’s the whole arrangement.
‘You missed the gossip,’ I say, because I have to say something.
‘I missed the gossip too. But also you. The delivery system.’ She waves her hand vaguely. ‘The whole package.’
‘I’m a package now?’
‘You’re a very good package. Reliable. Informative. Provide regular updates on infected sheep hooves.’ She cocks her head, grinning. ‘You’re basically my favourite person, Tom Darcy. Don’t let it go to your head.’
Favourite person. Filed.
‘That was one time,’ I say. ‘The sheep hooves.’
‘It was three times, Tom. I have them saved.’
‘Why do you have them saved?’
‘Evidence. In case I ever need to prove to someone that you have a deeply weird sense of humour.’ She hops down from the counter, and the sundress settles back over her knees, and Chips scrambles to reposition himself at her feet. ‘More tea?’
She takes my mug before I can answer, her fingers curling over mine for a second before she pulls it away, and she disappears behind the coffee machine.
I watch her move – kettle, milk, the dance of someone who knows this space with their eyes closed, who belongs here the way the walls do.
Chips follows her, his nails clicking on the tile, his eyes never leaving her.
‘He really has bonded with you,’ I say.
‘He has excellent taste.’ She glances down at him. ‘Don’t you? Yes, you do. You’re very discerning.’
‘You’re talking to him in a baby voice.’
‘I’m talking to him in the voice he deserves. Look at his face. This is a face that requires vocal accommodation.’
‘He’s a dog.’
‘He’s a philosopher. You said so yourself.’ She emerges with two fresh mugs and hands me mine. ‘So what happens now? Any luck searching for his owner?’
‘I keep checking the lost-dog pages.’ I shake my head. ‘Maybe I’ll put up a few more posters.’
‘And if no one does?’
‘Then I suppose he needs a home.’
She looks down at Chips. Chips looks up at her with resolute devotion of a creature that has no concept of timing or restraint, that simply walks towards the person it wants and sits on their feet and doesn’t think about whether it should.
Must be nice.
‘I have a home,’ she says slowly. ‘I have a café with a perfectly good floor he could sleep on.’
‘You want to keep him?’
‘I want to keep him.’ She says it like she’s realising it as the words come out. ‘Is that insane? I’ve known him for a few hours.’
‘He sat on your feet within thirty seconds of meeting you. I think the decision was already made.’
‘By him.’
‘By both of you. I saw your face.’
She looks at me, and there’s something vulnerable in her expression that I don’t see often – the underneath of Nina, the part she covers with motion and bangles and baking and laughter. ‘You think I can do it? Take care of a dog? I can barely take care of the fuchsias.’
‘You take care of everyone, Nina. The whole village comes to you. A dog is nothing.’
‘A dog is a commitment. A dog is showing up every day.’
‘You show up every day. You’ve never not shown up.’
‘I left for three weeks,’ she says.
‘You came back.’
‘I did.’ She looks around the café – at the fairy lights and the shuttered windows and the chalk menu still showing old specials.
Her eyes catch on something near the coffee machine and she goes still, just for a breath.
Peter’s magnet on the fridge. The cartoon penguin he stuck there as a joke, a year ago now.
She hasn’t taken it down. I don’t think she will.